


A Dreamer's Sleep

by mugsandpugs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Fluff, Friendship/Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 16:27:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10834965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugsandpugs/pseuds/mugsandpugs
Summary: Evan is worried about impending college entrance exams.Dab, as always, arrives to cheer him up.





	A Dreamer's Sleep

“Evan Evan Evan _Evan Evan Evan_ **Evan!”**

Roused from his studies by the rising crescendo of a familiar voice from outside his window, Evan Pancakes sighed, removed his reading glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling another headache coming on. He considered ignoring the calls, but Dab was extremely persistent. He could and would sing Evan’s name to the tune of various catchy songs- all of which would, of course, then be stuck in the boys’ head for days to come- until acknowledged. 

Besides; it was pouring rain, and despite what was said at school, he did possess a heart. 

Standing from his desk- _oh,_ he was stiff; he must have been sitting there longer than he realized- he crossed his tidy bedroom to the large sliding window that lead to his balcony, stepped outside, and seized the two noodle-thin arms that wrapped around the white guard rail. Dab’s skin was slippery and cold under his grasp. A fork of lightening flickered overhead. 

“Are you crazy?” Evan asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the rain, but he already knew the answer to that. 

Dab grabbed hold of his wrists, using a toehold on the support beams to climb to his feet, then trustingly fell forward. It was all Evan could do to catch him, arms snapping around his soaked t-shirt and knees buckling under the sudden extra weight. “You’ve got to stop doing this,” he grumbled through a mouthful of drenched hair as Dab clambered over the guard rails and made for the patio door to Evan’s bedroom. 

“No,” he protested before Dab could walk on the carpet, and pointed at his shoes, his t-shirt. 

Rolling his eyes pointedly in the direction of Evan’s own wet clothes, Dab obediently stripped to his underwear and stood, lanky and skinny and shivering, with his purple jeans slung over one arm and his tie-dye shirt over the other. His wild black curls had straightened and tumbled down his back from the deluge, but there wasn’t much that could be done about that. 

“May I enter, O Prince of Castle Pancakes?” he asked, and clasped his palms together in a pantomime of supplication. He tried to hide it, but his teeth chattered slightly under his blue lips. “Might I, a humble servant, dare set unworthy foot on yonder-“ 

“Oh my God,” Evan groaned, and pushed his childhood friend into his room. Dab’s shoulderblades, bird-boned as they were, felt small in his rough hands. His right thumb rested on a tattoo of one of many tropical fish that swam down and around the bumps of his spine. 

Evan shut the door after Dab and yanked off his own shirt, now drenched through, by the back of the neck. 

“One day you’re gonna fall climbing my house,” he muttered, draping his wet shirt over the arm of his treadmill. “And break your neck. And then I think your dad will send me to space without a helmet. We have actual doors and stuff that you’re allowed to use. In case you hadn’t figured that out after seventeen years.” 

“You always say that,” Dab waved his concerns off like so many pesky gnats, and walked blithely from the bedroom to Evan’s bathroom, where the running shower water could soon be heard. Evan rolled his eyes and changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, grateful his own buzz-cut hair would dry in minutes, and returned to his studies. 

He didn’t turn around when Dab returned minutes later, toweling his messy hair dry and rummaging through Evan’s closet for clothes to change into. There was a creak of springs as he fell back onto the bed, then crunching as he bit into something. Evan could smell apples. 

Rainwater continued pelting the roof, and the occasional echoing boom of thunder they felt to their very bones rang out. This was turning out to be quite a storm. 

“Your parents out tonight?” Dab asked, reaching for something under Evan’s bed. 

“Couples counseling,” Evan replied, disinterested. He saw his teachers at school more often than he saw his parents. “I think.” 

“Hm.” There was a light, musical twang of strings as Dab plucked at the ukulele that Tabitha, well-meaning but misguidedly, had purchased Evan for his last birthday. Unlike him, Dab was good at coaxing decent sounds from even the most stubborn of instruments. Like paints and clay and all other artistic mediums, music just couldn’t resist succumbing the boy’s bright smile and sunny disposition. 

“What are you reading?” Dab asked, after several minutes of idle strumming. 

Evan heaved a great sigh. “Did you come here just to interrupt me?” 

“I would never!” Dab protested innocently, but then, he was also a good actor. “I came because I know how scared of storms you are.” 

At this, Evan turned to face his friend, scorn etched in every line of his face. “When I was _seven years old,_ Dab. And only after you told me that horrible story about a monster that lived in stormclouds, might I add.” 

“Exactly!” Dab threw his left arm out, still holding the ukulele with his right. He was sprawled backwards over the length of Evan’s bed, head tipped so that his hair trailed down towards the floor. The lamplight glinted off the various piercings studding his ears. “I couldn’t leave you to face that alone, could I?” 

Looking at him, Evan couldn’t help but soften. He seemed so small in Evan’s clothes, all heavily-lashed Bambi eyes and moon-pearl skin and a mouth made for smiling. Just looking at him was sometimes enough to calm him down, slow him from his frantic-paced, anxiety-induced drive to achieve. It brought him back to a simpler time of playing pirates in Dab's swimming pool; mountain explorers on Evan's father's treadmill. Somehow, Dab made it seem okay to forget the real world and make-believe again, if only for a while. 

In answer to Dab’s question, Evan held up his prep book; thick and dusty with pages so thin they were transparent in the light. He was about a quarter of the way through the calculus practice. “I’m studying for the uni entrance exam I’m taking on Friday,” he explained. Even saying the words gave him a small shudder. He’d been running on coffee and little else all month doing just that. 

“Huh,” Dab sat up in interest. “Are those coming up already? I guess we’ve almost graduated.” He looked as though the thought were only just now crossing his mind. 

“I need to do well on these entrance exams, if I want any chance of earning the Cordelia scholarship,” Evan explained. “Only fifty students out of several thousand competing a year receive it. It would be a full-ride through eight years of medical school, housing included.” He’d had to work himself to the bone even to be eligible to take the exam, maintaining a high grade point average, working community service hours, participating in enough extracurricular activities, and submitting an eight-page letter requesting entry. It was finally crunch time after years of carefully calculated effort. 

Dab didn’t ask why Evan wouldn’t just let his parents pay for his university, though they clearly had the money. He knew Evan well enough to guess how distasteful his friend would find such an idea. 

“So you’ll take the test on Friday. And you’ll do great, well enough to place in the top fifty,” he said easily. “You know you have what it takes. At this point you’re just stressing yourself for nothing.” 

“You make it sound so easy,” Evan growled, frustration building. Why couldn’t Dab understand how important this was?! “What if I don’t make it?” 

“You will. And if you don’t… then you don’t. And that would suck, but we’d find another way.” 

“You-“ if Evan had enough hair, he’d be grabbing it by the fistful just now. Instead he buried his face in his hands and let out a little scream of exasperation. It came from deep inside, curling through his nose and lips despite trying hard to hold it back. “You don’t, I have to- I _have_ to-“ 

“- Yes, yes I know. You’ll go on to become a super famous doctor and cure diseases that nobody can pronounce. You’ll get your pictures in all those journals, and they’ll name a medicine after you.” Dab said it so confidently, as though it were common knowledge that these events would transpire. “And someday when you’re a retired billionaire, you’ll set up the Pancakes scholarship for kids who are just like you.” 

Evan fell silent. Although dramatized, those were more or less his life dreams laid bare. He and Dab, while not losing touch over their high school careers, had drifted apart some. Dab had many friends; he started and quit bands, travelled with the drama club, and did whatever he felt like at the time of doing it. They just hadn’t as much time for each other as they had as children. Yet clearly, Dab still knew him so well; the plain, quiet boy who couldn’t possibly compare to his dozens of colorful and energetic friends. 

“Well, what will _you_ do?” He retorted, a little flustered to have the dreams he kept so close to his heart out in the open. 

“Me?” Dab shrugged. “A little this, a little that. What does it matter? Maybe I’ll follow you to school and make sure you actually eat real-people food. Maybe I’ll be a one-man-band at subway stations.” Here he gave the ukulele an enthusiastic little strum. “Or paint peoples’ portraits on a boardwalk. Or a million other things. Why not do them all?” 

Evan could only gape at him, mouth opening and closing. He had no response to such a lackadaisical approach to life. 

“Evan, dude,” Dab said kindly, sitting up. “When was the last time you slept? I could carry groceries in the bags under your eyes.” 

The room was suddenly lit up by a burst of lightening, so bright that for several seconds everything- the alphabetically-organized books on his shelves, the record player, the posters of jazz artists and basketball players, and Dab himself, were bleached out by the blinding, blue-white glare. It seemed to last longer than it reasonably should have; Evan couldn't help but hold his breath. 

Then the power went out. 

Evan let out a little yelp of alarm at the crackly noise every single bulb in his lamp made as they sizzled and died. Wheeling his chair over to the wall, he flicked the switch a few times; nothing happened. Trying this on the lights over the patio, and then back in the hallway, yielded the same results: the entire house was blacked out. 

He felt his way along with nothing but his hands and memory. Panic threatened to choke him. _This was bad, this was really bad…_ He didn’t much like the dark at its appropriate time, and being stuck in a house without his parents with no light for God-knew how long was enough to make his heart pound and his palms sweat. 

He jolted when a hand found his. “It’s okay, Evan,” Dab said gently, like he Knew. But of course he did, he always knew when Evan was close to breaking. “Come on, before you trip on something.” 

He didn’t protest as he was tugged back onto his bed. “I- I’m fine,” he forced himself to say. His mouth felt very dry. He wondered if he was having a panic attack. 

“I know you are,” Dab replied. “It’s okay. We can wait this one out, big guy.” He rubbed soothing circles on Evan’s back. “C’mon. Tell me about the wonders of anatomy and medicinal studies.” 

Haltingly, with a throat like dry sandpaper, Evan regaled Dab with what he’d most recently learned in his sports medicine class. He couldn't have been very coherent, but Dab listened, nodding at points (his frizzy hair tickling Evan’s neck) and even asking a few questions here and there. Gradually Evan felt his pulse calm to something more reasonable. 

“Well I know who I’m coming to if I ever get a torn ACL,” Dab said, and Evan could hear the fond grin in his voice. “I’d trust no other doctor with all _this.”_

“Did you just gesture to your entire body?” 

“You know I did.” 

Evan snorted. 

Dab fell back onto the bed. Evan could hear his hand patting around for something until he found the ukulele again, and then he strummed it, fingers knowing the chords even without the aid of light. 

“If I get a new tattoo, it’ll remind myself of you,” he sang softly. Then tried, “It’ll remind me of you.” Then, _“When_ I get a new tattoo…” 

Listening to his friend try out half-lyrics to a new song he must have been working on, Evan felt calmed even more. The pure darkness, the claustrophobia of being trapped in an enclosed space until the weather decided to let up, the stress that he was missing precious time he should devote to studying, all began to fade. Tentatively, he laid back on the bed as well. 

His arm accidentally brushed Dab’s. He didn’t bother moving it away, and neither did Dab. 

“Why do you do all this for me?” he asked, as Dab attempted a key change. 

Again, Dab’s grin in the darkness was audible. “Wow, Evan, I thought you were supposed to be smart. You really don’t know by now?” 

Evan rolled his eyes. “Fine, don’t tell me.” 

“You’ll just have to figure it out,” Dab sang. “But that’s fine, I’ll give you the time.” 

Evan yawned, jaw popping a little, as he nestled deeper into his pillow and closed his eyes. Something about Dab's voice- sweet, but pleasantly raspy- and the way the ukulele strings blended with the rainfall, and the warm arm against his, were pulling his eyelids closed fast. “Are you gonna stay tonight?” he asked. 

“Yeah, dude. Till the storm ends. Someone's gotta protect you from stormcloud monsters.” 

“Good.” And then exhaustion was carrying Evan down, down into the pillow. He’d never felt more safe.


End file.
